ZCS 3.0 Milestone 2 Language Files

This post describes how to localize the Zimbra Collaboration Server (ZCS) property files. The following are the files that must be localized for ZCS:

AjxMsg.properties - Ajax Toolkit general messages

ZmMsg.properties - These are the message for the collaboration client

ZaMsg.properites - These are the messages for the Admin client

ZMsg.properites - These are the error messages

The above files are attached to this post in a zip file.

Localization File Structure and Rules

The message property files follow the Java property file model. For specific locales the above files will follow the local specific _xx_YY notation. For example to localize to English United Kingdom (en_GB) there would be a AjxMsg_en_GB.properties version of AjxMsg.properties. For the fallback for English, it would be AjxMsg_en.properties and so on for each of the above files

Only messages that are different from the immediate fallback need be updated. So for example if the following are in the AjxMsg_en.properties file:

color=Color
save=Save the file now
help=Press F1 for help

And the AjxMsg_en_GB.properties file only needs to change the value of the "color" message, the the file would consist of a single entry:
color=Colour
Character Sets

All the properties MUST be in ASCII which means that if the translations are in a different character set, then the file must be converted by escaping the Unicode characters to \uWXYZ. This can be done by using the native2ascii program that ships with every JDK. The general usage is the following: native2ascii -encoding name inputfile [outputfile]

Here's a specific example of the usage:

native2ascii -encoding UTF-8 AjxMsg_ja.utf8 AjxMsg_ja.properties

Testing

To test a localization perform the following steps:

Copy the *.properties files to /zimbra/WEB-INF/classes/msgs/

Restart the zimbra web application

Packaging

Packaging a localization is simply providing a "zip" archive of the files that have been localized.
Contributing to Zimbra

To contribute a localization for inclusion into the ZCS, the Zimbra contributor agreement must be completed and provided to Zimbra. The contributor agreement is available at: